Serious Problems with RSS - Part 2 (The ‘Wire’ Effect)
You don’t create communities in RSS readers. You can’t really engage with readers. You really can’t do anything except consume raw content.
- Phil Sim, Why I hate RSS readers
Phil Sim made several great points when he wrote the piece quoted above. Another problem with RSS is that in many ways it turns content providers into a wire service. As Sim notes:
To use an old-media analogy, it’s the difference between writing for a wire service or writing for a newspaper. On a wire service, you’re story can pop up anywhere and likely will. On a newspaper, you’re a part of something. Something that hopefully stands for something and means something.
He goes on to reference several blogs that have true communities, where “half the time the comments on those sites are more interesting than the original posts.”
I’m not going to put all the blame on RSS when it comes to lack of community. I previously referenced the 90-9-1 research, where we saw that when it comes to the web participation inequality occurs across the board. It was exacerbated on blogs (95-5-.1). That’s where I see the problem with RSS - it is an enabler to further the ‘lurker’ mentality.
Things like FeedBurner’s FeedFlare try to combat that to some extent by building greater interactivity into feeds. But it’s only a first step to addressing the wire effect issue.
October 25, 2006 at 9:59 am
Ken,
A question to ponder, is it RSS that is the problem or the people using it? Another way to put it would be, is it the RSS (feed and reader) technology that is the problem or does it only add to the problem? I have a strong suspicion that RSS is a technology birthed out of the ‘Suburban Legend’ that “I need to get more done with less time.” People (me included) fill their RSS reader of choice with loads and loads of feeds knowing full well that they simply cannot make the commitment to read more than a select portion of those. The WANT to consume and maybe even participate in all of those blogs b/c they are genuinely interested in all of them but with time as the limiting constraint they are forced to choose a select few.
So it seems each RSS feeds are like acquaintances and blogs (that you go to and comment on) are like friends. Each person must choose to spend their limited time either establishing a few genuine friendships or amassing a large number of acquaintances. The problem is people feel a need to know of a lot of people rather than truly know a select few people. The same is true with blogs (and MySpace for that matter). The majority of people can’t resist the pressure to try and consume it all (make many acquaintances) instead of selecting a few to truly participate in (establishing deep relationships or learning). These two concepts are at odds with one another and is true in life as well as the ‘blogoshere’. The Suburban Legend isn’t true. We don’t need to get more done with less time. We need to go deeper people, interests, blogs, learning in the same amount of time. The way to buy time isn’t with better technology but with fewer (& deeper) commitments/subscriptions.
Sorry to get all philosophical on you. :) A big shout out to Tony Morgan for the Suburban Legend reference.
http://www.tonymorganlive.com/tony_morgan_one_of_the_si/2006/10/watch_this_mess.html
October 25, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Here’s what I just posted on squash a moment ago and want to emphasize the main idea - RSS is a fantastic opportunity for online conversations and transactions if the right tools and platforms are built around it. Currently, RSS is a press release mechanism. It’s preceeded by an ugly orange button. There’s a lot more potential there - but it must be made interesting and compelling to users/consumers. “Great posts and, yes, RSS feeds are largely sterile from a community standpoint. With Offertrax, we’re giving merchants and consumers the ability to connect and have conversations based around RSS feeds that can be shared with communities. We expect the communities to be built around products or specific offers. RSS allows folks to “pull” what interests them and, going forward as consumers gain more control, that is the way the Web is going.”